space! the final frontier!

[freckles_and_doubt]

So, here I sit at my rather small desk, of which vast expanses are suddenly free and empty, ready to be filled with exciting tottering piles of the current research (which is Tolkien and fan culture, and therefore barely qualifies as work). And why? Because I have the best friends in the multiverse, is why. The Great Birthday Conspiracy, which originated in the generous and fermenting brain of Jo(ty), turned out to be a joint present from about 30 people, a large, square, flat box wrapped in exciting shiny purple and gold paper, and containing... a new LCD monitor for my computer. It's slender, and black, and very, very sexy, and is seriously putting to stylistic shame my keyboard and mouse. I shall have to replace them with black, curvy ones.

The side-effect of the Amazing Friend syndrome is that a good half of them are computer geeks, which means they not only gave me the monitor, they assembled and installed it, causing me to spend a good two-thirds of last night's party bouncing around on the tips of my toes uttering excited squeaks, as relays of guests shuttled into the study to Admire. And Win98 found drivers when I booted this morning, no problems at all (despite the fact that the instructions on the packaging don't even mention something as lowly as 98), and the screen is clear and sharp and utterly, utterly free of wibble and fade. Deep is my happiness. Huge is my gratitude. Yoda is clearly my linguistic role model.

It was a good party, too. Evil Landlord made his killer gluhwein, and I made mulled cider, and bunches of snacks, which is inevitable for one whose cooking motto is "There's no such thing as too much food." Guests left groaning and weaving slightly, which is to me the hallmark of a successful party. Lots of people there I haven't seen in a while, excellent catch-up opportunities. We also played Gloom, which is an entertainingly Edward Goreyesque card game on transparent cards, where you play a mad family of some sort, the purpose being to drive the disfunctional members ever deeper into depression and angst, until they finally expire. (Young Mike shall suffer for the happiness he inflicted on my family). Lots of fun, I shall have to acquire a copy. What's with ironic Gothic at the moment? Very Adams family feel, but it's huge right now - Lemony Snicket being the archetypal example. I suppose it's the inevitable moment where consumer culture circles back and appropriates the fringe counter-cultures of the past. Alas, poor Goth.

I am left with a slightly guilty appreciation of the hideous power that is the blog phenomenon. It certainly seems to address the problem of what people want for their birthdays... As Neil says, next time I should simply casually mention that I really need about 30 million rand, and see what happens...

Comments

Re: well congratumalations!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing is that, once I've spent the day cooking and the evening bounding around pressing food on people, approximately the last thing I feel like doing is actually eating any of it. This strange sort of diet plan frequently causes my guests to look sideways at me and mutter about poison, but so far, no fatalities. Anyway, at parties I'm generally too busy losing my drink to eat. (I lose it an average of about twice an hour - put it down on a surface somewhere and can't find it, so I spend the evening drifting vaguely through the room wailing "But where's my drink?!" On Friday the suggestion was made that they could have concealed the Seekrit Surprise Pressie from me practically indefinitely, despite its metre-square purpleness, by simply putting my drink down on top of it).

And, as to the fashionably thin... darned alien metabolism is failing me. You approach 30, and the hips start ballooning, and no alien genetics in the world is going to stop that. I am somewhat more substantial than when you last saw me :>.